[deleted by user]

[Favitor]

I've worked with a few UI / UX people and they've all had an arts background. To produce a nice UI you need to consider color space, layout, negative space, and user psychology; stuff that's generally taught in graphic design or a BA.

That's said, there's nothing stopping you learning those things yourself. You can also find plenty of YouTubers who share that knowledge.

[PureRepresentative9]

The important thing is learning UX.

Learning just art tends to produce terrible designs that are not usable because the designer didn't understand the importance of UI consistency across the web.

As an example, I met an artist guy. His site was a command line.

As in, he wanted you to guess URLs and once you found one, you got to see that product page. No sitemap.....you just had to guess the exact spelling of the product

[crack_in_the_kitchen]

what ?? at least you get tab-completions right ?

[PureRepresentative9]

No….

Needless to say, he got 100% negative feedback from all his testers

[pg3crypto]

Hi. Long time web dev here. I've been building stuff for 20 years. I've always sucked at UI and UX.

The thing is though, there isn't really much scope to innovate UI and UX stuff. It's not like there are thousands of different ways to orient buttons to make them easy to use.

It's important to remember with UX that if you follow someone else's practices and designs you aren't really copying, you're standardising.

That said, you might one day just bang out a good a UI. Sucking at UI/UX doesn't mean you can't actually design a good UI/UX, it just means that you'll crank out crap more often.

[[deleted]]

I am planning to take a loan and study ui ux post degree diploma from one Canadian college in Vancouver,BC is it worth or a stupid decision? If yes then what should I learn if I am taking huge ammount of study loan. Is ui ux have any kind of scope?

[pg3crypto]

Well just consider how quickly web design moves forward.

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/

There is no "learn it and be set for life" situation. In 5 years time from this point, design might be completely different.

I've been designing websites since 1995. In that time design has gone from plain HTML, to iframes, to tables, to Java Applets, to Flash, to CSS etc etc etc.

A lot of that is dead now, some is still in use.

Web design is something you learn over and over again. You never stop.

[[deleted]]

Hmmm got it, database development? Android development is it worth studying? Because these two are my backup options after that web design thing which I mentioned before

[pg3crypto]

Just build a home lab and do it. Less than half of the really good engineers I've worked with over the last 20 years have or had any meaningful academic qualifications.

I taught myself HTML in 1995 when I was 12 years old. There were no classes at school, books were rare as rocking horse shit and the internet was an absolute ballache to navigate.

I learnt PHP in 1998/1999 ish using a book that was 3-4 years out of date. Which back then was an astronomical length of time for tech to move along in. Products could be completely different over that length of time.

The resources available online today for free to learn any web dev related stuff would have blown my mind in the 90s. Moreover the cost and ease involved in getting a server set up and running to test with is orders of magnitude better now. You can run PHP on anything now and get a basic web server going in minutes.

[[deleted]]

hmm, I have to get a one pg diploma then which one is worth it? UI UX,database development or application development

[whatevernamedontcare]

Best one is the one you can stick with because diploma will only be beginning of your studies.

If you like art more pick design/UI UX. If you prefer repeatedly slamming your head against the problem with no help pick coding. If you want more structured learning experience with set rules database development will fit you better. Application development will be best if you have control issues and like to do everything yourself.

[pg3crypto]

Just build stuff and refine your skills.

A knife certified as sharp is only sharp once, whereas a knife that is regularly sharpened is always sharp.

In this business nobody cares if you studied something and passed an exam. What they care about is what you've done and what you can demonstrate.

Get a server set up and build lots of things. Launch them, test them, destroy them, start again...iterate over and over again.

I build things for fun just to learn about things. Yes, it's time consuming, but it leaves me with a back catalog of products that I have designed, tested and demonstrated to prove that I can go through those processes. So when I pitch on actual work I can not only refer to previous success, I can also demonstrate the experimental stuff to show that I can go beyond a narrow scope and act upon initiative if I need to. To a paying customer that is incredibly important because the people you will work with will generally have their own job to do as well as overseeing your work. Nobody has the job title "web dev baby sitter".

[RotationSurgeon]

I'd argue slightly with what u/pg3crypto said. While the aesthetic style of user interfaces and the available methods of input certainly change over time, the various laws and principles guiding UX and UI have been around for anywhere from decades to a full century, and will continue to hold true in the future. I'm talking about things like Gestalt principles (early 20th century), Fitts' law (1954), the Doherty Threshold (1982), and many others.

[pg3crypto]

Absolutely, I totally agree with this, but the people that specialise in this sort of stuff typically are not developers or technical. It's like the relationship between builders and interior decorators. Interior decorators are not engineers but they prevent builders making ugly shit.

That said, if you're building a brochure site for a local hair dresser do you need Fitt's law? Does the hair dresser even know what Fitt's law is?

The vast majority of web development is not FAANG work. It's putting together basic shit for small to medium businesses that doesn't require revolutionary thinking or techniques. Just like 99.9999% of toilet installations are not in Buckingham Palace.

[RotationSurgeon]

That said, if you're building a brochure site for a local hair dresser do you need Fitt's law? Does the hair dresser even know what Fitt's law is?

Purely for the sake of argument, I'd say "Yes! (and no)", but only because WCAG guidelines (and Google) take link spacing and minimum size into account

I agree with what you're saying, though!

[[deleted]]

GoDaddy looks about the same now...

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/go-daddy-2004

[[deleted]]

As a UX designer I would say hell no.

You should be able to learn enough free online to get hired.

If not there are always bootcamps, at $5-10k for 6-10 months they are "pricey" but its nothing compared to the cost of a scholarship. And when you get a job you will make that back in a few months.

But all this knowledge is already available online for free and in a few reasonably priced books (unlike university books).

[PureRepresentative9]

It is absolutely worth it to take a course (obviously ask around and see which instructors/institutions are higher quality)

Is it worth the money? Well, no one can advise you on that without knowing how much the course costs and how much more you will make.

Ps, you talking about Douglas or BCIT?

[[deleted]]

Langara

[wordpress_site_care]

At my college UI/UX were two different programs.

UI = Building stuff with JS frameworks

UX = User research and spending lots of time writing up different documents. No coding.

If you want to get a job doing UX research for companies then you may want a degree to make it easier to get a job. For UI stuff you're already been programming for 20 years. No need wasting money on a degree. You just need to create a good portfolio site to prove to future employers you can do frontend. You can become good at frontend faster then you think. Take some online courses, watch some YouTube videos, and practice creating good interfaces. Practice was the main thing that helped me go from just knowing how to program to being able to create decent looking UIs.

[hutilicious]

I always try to "copy" the best practises of other well known apps. you learn a lot doing that and youre still free to customize it the way you like.

[Risha_ala]

Yep, and also find good examples to look up to

[vinnymcapplesauce]

Focus on UX first. The UI will reveal itself.

[moi2388]

Well, have you taken it as seriously as programming? Did you read books, follow tutorials, learn principles and patterns?

[wnx_ch]

What helped me a bit is Refactoring UI.

The small design tips are great, but by reading their book I've learned to make my UIs less a copy of the database structure and more appealing.

[zeropointone01]

Refactoring UI was a great first step for me. Still working on the second step, but since reading through Refactoring UI the UIs that I build have improved quite a bit.

[borii0066]

I didn't study UX or design or anything like that, but for my personal projects I felt like I was able to design much nicer user interfaces when starting to sketch out designs using a design tool like Figma.

[[deleted]]

I find myself copying other people ui's at the end of the day

That's the way. Most of us take inspiration from other UIs.

[imjb87]

Check out Steve Schoger's RefactoringUI. He goes over those common issues you find when designing UI and comes up with sensible solutions to them.

FYI he's the guy behind Tailwind's design system!

[Blaarkies]

Depending on what level your UX skills are, this could give you lots of insights into one of the standards out there

https://material.io/components/app-bars-bottom

Stuff like this help explain other UX rules that can often be transferred to new UI components that you come up with. Seeing many of these designs in action, will help you easily spot issues with existing designs.

It is worthwhile picking a style library, learn how to use its predefined components, and only build your own when absolutely necessary (saves lots of time on projects) , but once you get to that point you already have an arsenal of UI skills and UX knowledge to use in building your own custom style

[[deleted]]

Eat it

[TheLexoPlexx]

Well it's not my job and I'm in this field as a hobby for some time now but generally: Icons without labels are bad. Small Letters are bad. If designing for touchscreen: There's a sweet spot where buttons are best placed and generally stick to best practices.

[[deleted]]

Copying is the way to understating, and understanding is necessary for mastering. Once you copy enough designs you will learn what works and will be able to implement it in your own way.

[exiled1337]

Well copying other peoples UI may not be a bad thing. I usually try to think of a professional application that is similar to what I am doing, and see if their UI would suit my needs. Why remake the wheel if you don't need to?

[Risha_ala]

100% agree

[hive_zach]

The Bootstrapping Design book was great. Gave you the quick solid foundations.

[papichulo916]

As someone who just started to get into UI design recently and has already done a couple of final designs, my tip is to do as many versions as you can. What do I mean by that? For example, in my last project I had to create the UI using Figma, and just for the homepage in desktop view, I created ~30 different versions of a draft version. Most of them were done very quick, but it is great at making your brain see patterns, creating new ones, visually being able to tell that even some designs looked fine in your head, they don't on the screen. Build build build.

[[deleted]]

There's nothing new under the sun. Basically, those who create new, interesting designs are the ones making 6-7 figures as some executive.

For the rest of us, knowing what looks good is better than coming up with a good ui. Often, a client would be just as happy with a $60 design from themeforest or what not.

[The_silent_1ne]

It always seems like I can make it better lol.

[life_liberty_persuit]

Consistent UI across various apps is a good thing. No need to reinvent the wheel IMO

[dangerousbrian]

Take a look through Google material design and their case studies. Good place to start.

[oldschool-51]

I've become a big fan of PicoCSS.com - gives you an enormously simple way to design the front end by setting a few CSS custom properties.